Access U2’s U.S. Patent No. 7,643,821 (the ‘821 patent) is foundational to the very infrastructure of the mobile advertising industry. The patent solved critical shortcomings of the state of the art, enabling advertisers to legally collect mobile users’ data and to push to them rich digital content in real-time.

A mobile phone user seeing an advertisement with a phone number or short code number is encouraged to subscribe - “opt-in” - by texting a keyword in the ad to the number. Acting on this “call-to-action” ad, the mobile phone user is now subscribed to automatically receive media-rich-capable messages (text, images, video, etc.) from the ad campaign just opted into.

See how the ‘821 patent helped enable the mobile ad industry to become what it is today:

According to several industry studies, U.S. media advertising spending on mobile ads will reach $132 billion in 2025—surpassing TV ($70B) and significantly outpacing combined spending on print ($18B), radio ($14B), and out-of-home ($8B). As of 2025, mobile has become the dominant advertising channel across all media formats.

A mobile phone user seeing any number is given the ability to subscribe (“opt-in”) to the respective advertisement by texting a Keyword to a phone number or short code. From this point forward, this mobile phone subscriber automatically receives media-rich-capable messages (text, images, video, etc.) from the respective campaign that they opted into.